The Hollywood novel is a difficult undertaking, especially in the era of Google and TMZ. F. Scott Fitzgerald basing “The Love of the Last Tycoon” on Irving Thalberg of MGM was a simple alteration; Charles Bukowski's namesake barely changed letters for his confessional on the making of “Barfly.” Even in reinvention, the stock characters remain ripe for dissection, if not fodder.

In “The Actress,” Amy Sohn's half-farce, half- Flaubertian treatment of Tinseltown, Maddy Freed is a burgeoning ingénue on the indie film scene. She and her creative (and life) partner, Dan, take to the fest circuit, where their scrappy feature collaboration, “I Used to Know Her,” wins Maddy a nod for her acting and acclaim for Dan as a director. As Maddy weighs pitches from high-profile agents, Steven Weller, an aging but charismatic TV and film icon, entices her to Europe to audition as his co-star in an erotic drama by a cantankerous auteur who smells like Roman Polanski.

Weller's charms soon wear down Maddy, and she ditches Dan for life as Mrs. Steven Weller. Soon she becomes one-half of “SteMad,” leaving hostess duties in New York behind for paparazzi and pedicures. Naturally, the rumors that Steven is gay swirl, with Maddy struggling for her own artistic street cred outside her husband's controlling shadow. But as Maddy gestates an unexpected pregnancy, she must choose between the lap of luxury and, well, living well off the post-nup.

“The Actress” digs deep into its characters' psyche but doesn't surpass its gossip-rag genesis. In Sohn's novel, Sundance is replaced by Mile's End Film Festival, and a fictional red-haired late-night host stands in for Conan O'Brien. Some touchstones exist — Spielberg, People Magazine and the Toronto International Film Festival.

But the author's deft telling of the power structure, development and sale of entertainment feels out of key at times. Consider the exploitation titles she dreams up for her character's movies: a gross-out comedy called “Bunk,” a sappy drama called “The Pharmacist's Daughter” and “The Moon and The Stars.” The last — a Douglas Sirk-esque homage, a la “Far From Heaven,” about a 1960s wife discovering her husband is gay — parallels Maddy's own marriage to a megastar. Glitches such as these film titles highlight the novel's self-aware tendencies.

We should talk about TomKat here. Weller has many Tom Cruise trappings: his control issues and hate of pharmaceuticals, an abusive father, a Paula Wagner-esque business partner and a legendary lawyer to squash gay rumors by litigation (and here, with bags of cash). Even so, Weller is equally inspired by George Clooney, with his Italian residence, TV career, dips into independent dramas and shockingly thick hair. Maddy, though, is pretty much Katie Holmes, save for some family tragedy, right down to her boyish frame and propensity for acting actorish.

Sohn's biggest achievement, and arguably the most moving of the book, is her ability to create vast interior worlds for her characters. The stories they tell themselves — and the calculations behind them — nearly allow the novel to transcend its cautionary Hollywood-tale trappings to become an allegory for the perfunctory death of romance.

Sohn pushes past Los Angeles tropes of shallow shakers to create characters who are meaningful beasts. These are wounded people: layered, earnest (or at least trying not to lie), aching to be loved — and deserving it. With Kira, a co-star in “I Used to Know Her” who winds up replacing Maddy on a passion project, Sohn mines the depths of complicated female friendship in just a few scenes, rivaling a binge-season of “Girls.” Bridget, Weller's longtime manager, is written with such complexity you can picture Meryl Streep accepting an Oscar for the role.

But the promise of the book, from its pulp flairs to self-imposed Henry James comparisons, never quite transcends glossies or popcorn twists into Chekhovian pathos. As Maddy unravels into Victorian hysteria from her suspicions of Steven's sailing trips, you hope for a stick of dynamite to blow but are left holding a bag of dud bang snaps. You want “Soylent Green” or “Rosemary's Baby,” but instead get a remedial gender studies lecture from an old lover who jokes, meta, that he's a gay Yoda. Deus ex machina; sashay away.

I half-wished Sohn had stacked on a Scientology plot, even if she changed the name to MindHead, just for some spaceships to land.

Brandon Ogborn is author of the acclaimed play “The TomKat Project.”

“The Actress”

By Amy Sohn, Simon & Schuster, 337 pages, $26

Correction and clarification: An earlier version of this review included inaccuracies and potentially confusing information. The lead character, Maddy, did not literally consider living in Silver Lake; the reviewer used Silver Lake to indicate a bohemian lifestyle. “Entertainment Tonight” is not mentioned in the book. Two fictitious film titles were confused.